PUBLIC FORUM : EARLY START NEEDED TO IMPROVE MATH, ENGLISH.

Re ``Panel seeks improved standards for LAUSD,'' Daily News, Nov. 21:

While raising secondary school standards in math and English is important, it is only one part of a much more comprehensive solution which merits consideration.

Acquiring competence in math and language arts begins before children even enter school, making primary-grade instruction especially important. As a researcher in the field of literacy, I know that children need to read early - most studies suggest before the third grade - to avoid years of remedial instruction and derailed school careers.

What can we do to improve reading programs? First, we can make sure that the thousands of new teachers hired because of statewide class size reductions have access to quality professional development - teaching excellence requires much more than intuition about what works.

Second, we can make sure that children have adequate access to large amounts of a variety of high-quality reading materials. Most school libraries are shamefully understocked, underfunded and out of date. In most schools in highly diverse, poor communities, these reading materials represent most or all of the access to literacy, which is taken for granted in homes with more resources.

Finally, there is a need for high-quality reading programs based on interesting, meaningful and diverse literature. It is critical that these programs integrate basic skills in a way that makes sense to children so they see these skills as useful tools in their quest to become literate citizens.

With balanced programs, we can inspire our children so that as high school students they can easily achieve the higher standards now being established.

- Robert Rueda

Professor, Division of Educational Psychology

University of Southern California 

Los Angeles 

Front-yard parking

For over 20 years, I have parked my motor home in an expanded driveway so I still have access to my garage with my automobile. I am on Social Security and a small pension, for I am going to be 67 this August. I have worked very hard all my life to pay off my home, and in a few payments more, my RV will be paid off in full. I am also a Korean War veteran with a heart problem, which means I must make frequent visits to the V.A. Hospital.

All of a sudden, the Department of Building and Safety comes by and cites me and at least 50 other RV owners, stating that we are breaking the law, for this is considered our front yard, and it is illegal to park a vehicle in your front yard. I tried to find a place to store my RV, but most of the places want about $80 per month - that's if they even have space. I have talked to other senior citizens and some even broke down and cried.

We have gone to the City Council to change the law to protect us, and they refuse. They probably are too busy trying to get the leaf blowers arrested.

In the meantime, I was looking for a place to park and came home to find out they came on my property and gave me a parking ticket, which will cost me $30. At this point, I can pull it out in the street and move it every 72 hours until I can find a buyer outside of Los Angeles.

This is really a nice way to live out my life in the few years I have left.

Frank Jacobs

Sylmar

Texaco payout

I am puzzled by the Nov. 21 Opinions article by Kevin Ross and John Bryant (``Racism's hidden hand''). They want 1,400 black Texaco employees ``not to just take the $176 million and quietly go away.''

First, I believe those employees get to keep their jobs, so they need not ``go away.'' If my math is right, that settlement provides a lump sum of $125,714 per black employee.

I am a white, Jewish, working-class man, and I have never had even a 20th of 125 grand in my bank account. If a higher-up in the organization that employs me were to use some unflattering ethnic stereotype regarding me, I would be unpleasantly surprised and disappointed. However, if I were then paid over $125,000 to soothe my hurt feelings, not only would I ``go away quietly,'' I would leap for joy and run laughing like a hyena to the bank.

Ross and Bryant, in their first paragraph, say the Texaco discrimination suit ``slaps us back into the real world.''

The way they trivialize the importance of a huge financial settlement causes me to tell them both to ``get real.''

Dan Adam Goodman

North Hollywood

Boland's defeat

Three cheers for Susan Pasternak concerning her letter dated Nov. 14 (``Boland got what she deserved''). I'm glad I'm not the only one that found out that Paula Boland strictly represents Boland.

I'm a Republican, a senior citizen and a mobile-home owner who resides in Boland's former district. When she originally ran for the Assembly, we campaigned and worked hard to help her get elected.

She promised, if elected, to support and help senior citizens, especially those who reside in mobile-home parks. Needless to say, after she was elected, she deceived all the folks, both old and young, who reside in mobile-home parks and apartment complexes. She voted against rent control, knowing it would be very damaging to seniors and the many folks who are barely existing on fixed or meager incomes.

Even though I'm a Republican, I must say congratulations, Adam Schiff. He did us a big favor.

Ray Hudson 

Sylmar

Cyberspace combat

With reference to the feature on the front page of the Business section on Nov. 22, ``Computer action game serves as release for conventioneers'':

``Come over and kill everyone.'' This was the invitation to the attendees at the recent Comdex computer show in Las Vegas - to participate in a really fun virtual combat simulation being promoted by Creative Labs Inc. of Milpitas. The enthusiastic participants could release their tensions by employing such weapons as a ``shotgun, ax, rocket launcher or - get this - a power nail driver,'' in a Gothic castle environment, to ``shoot everything and everyone in sight.''

And so many of us claim that we are concerned that gang members have so little respect for human life.

David E. Spencer

Hidden Hills

Abortion is killing, too

The case of the teen-age couple accused of killing their newborn infant has been on my mind. I was struck by the fact that if they had visited an abortion clinic a few weeks earlier and had an abortion, they would not be suffering any legal sanctions now. Instead, their action would be fully sanctioned by society.

This greatly disturbs me. I can understand the outrage at the murder of a newborn infant, but why is it lawful to kill an infant in the womb?

Are people truly unaware that there are thousands of couples eagerly waiting to adopt babies?

It is morally wrong to take the life of a child, born or unborn, simply for the sake of convenience or to avoid responsibility.

Don Whiteley

Ridgecrest

Saving 818

I am writing in regard to your editorial ``Ringing success'' (Dec. 1).

I would like to congratulate the leaders from Burbank and Glendale for successfully fighting to keep the two communities in the 818 area code. As a consumer and business owner, I am grateful for their involvement and assistance.

I agree that it is time the Public Utilities Commission pushed the idea for overlay zones. Unfortunately, however, there are others who also need to be sold on overlays. Perhaps a good marketing strategist might be able to show the companies who are opposed to overlays how to market themselves in relation to the new technology as it becomes available to the public.

I am tired of being inconvenienced by area code changes. Enough is enough.

Eden Rosen

Burbank

Caltrans neglecting property

Regarding the Daily News article Nov. 24, ``White elephant or historic jewel; restoration cost irks some.''

I am also irked over the cost of the proposed restorations of Caltrans' residential properties. This is money that should never have been spent.

I am the current resident of the Grokowsky House in South Pasadena, which was featured in the article, and is in the path of the proposed Long Beach Freeway extension. For over a decade I have pleaded with Caltrans and the state Transportation Commission to maintain their properties and to rent all of them out, instead of boarding some up and allowing them to deteriorate.

Caltrans claims that ``the reason (our properties) are in such bad shape is because we didn't have enough money to fix them up.'' But Caltrans has been collecting rent for decades and not using the money, as any rational landlord would, to maintain their investments.

Instead, the money has gone to the state General Fund, which would pay the state's share of the 710 extension. Caltrans has for decades knowingly violated federal and state law, Gov. Pete Wilson's executive order and its own policies regarding the maintenance of properties.

California Transportation Commissioner David Fleming states that repairs are ``just a waste of money . . . to fix up homes that are going to be moved.''

But there is no funding available for an extension of the 710 now or in the foreseeable future. While the extension has been proposed for close to half a century, the project is not in the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's 20-year plan.

Michael Burch

South Pasadena

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Photo

PHOTO The Grokowsky House, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright student Rudolph Schindler, qualifies for the National Register of Historic Places.

Hans Gutknecht/Daily News